Bath Salts: The Safe Way to Add Essential Oils to Your Bath

What could be more soothing than a hot bath with lavender essential oil? Or peppermint oil in your bath to get your morning going?

But because oils and water don’t mix, adding undiluted essential oils to your bath could potentially burn your skin. It happened to a friend of mine.

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Diluting the essential oil with a carrier oil first (ie. olive oil) can help, and will moisturize your skin. But mixing the essential oils with a salt is your best bet, causing the oils to disperse in your bath.

Basic Bath Salt Recipe

Making your own bath salt couldn’t be simpler. Here are the basics:

2 cups sea salt or epsom salts, or any combination of the two.

15 – 30 drops of essential oil – see below for recommendations.

1 T. carrier oil (jojoba, coconut, olive, or other) This is optional, but if your skin needs moisturizing, it is recommended.

Essential Oil Recommendations

For an energizing bath, add 10 drops of spearmint and 5 drops of rosemary essential oils.

To elevate your mood, try adding a combination of 30 drops total of sweet orange, grapefruit and tangerine essential oils. Note that citrus oils are phototoxic and should not be used before sun exposure.

To soothe achy muscles, or open up your sinus passages, try 20 drops of eucalyptus oil.

Other essential oils to consider in your bath salts include frankincense, clary sage, rose, geranium, or juniper. Be creative and mix and match!

Sources for Quality Salts and Essential Oils

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Hi Sarah! No, fragrance oils are not the same as essential oils. Fragrance oils are manufactured scents which contain artificial substances. Essential oils are naturally derived from plants and besides being fragrant they are often therapeutic. I don’t have any experience with fragrance oils and I don’t know if they are irritating to the skin, but I personally would hesitate to use them in a bath.

If you use coconut oil, how do you integrate in the salt mixture? Do you melt it? Also do you ever add mica powder to the mixture? Thinking of making for Bridal Shoer favours . Any tips you can give me?

I used ecalyptus Epsom salt and frankincense and think I put too much oil in the salt because I have a red rash on my butt.. but I enjoyed the relaxing of the two for a bit before it got a little warm in spots

I mixed Lavender and Frankincense together with mine but I also put mine in the oven for 2 minutes to let the coconut oil melt it together first and then broke it apart with a spatula. Absolutely loved this sent and relaxing sent and the way that it made me feel… I had taken a fall a couple of days before so this really helped the sore muscles. Thanks

I always include carrier oil. Based on my experiments, salt doesn’t really do much to help the oils disperse throughout the bath. (I experimented with German chamomile because it’s strongly-colored, so it’s visible. I can’t swear all other essential oils will behave *exactly* the same way, but the salt did not make a noticeable difference in the EO distribution.)

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Wonderful content precious. This is actually an amazing posting. Thanks for discussing my Epsom salt write-up, Susan! Certainly one of my favorite combos is violescent and ylang ylang. I sleep as good after putting in that !!